Where Are All The Netflix Classics?

            Objectively measuring a film’s impact is such an abstract concept, it’s almost an impossibility. 

    A film’s cultural resonance can manifest in any number of ways, and not all of them are ever expressed or documented. A viewer may not even realize how they are even affected by a film in the first place. Moreover, the audience that elevates a film to legend is not always the audience this film premieres to: hindsight and evolving perspectives have been key to the elevation of many works of high art across time.

            That all said, if you were to ask me how impacted I was by almost any Netflix original film, I can’t say with any confidence that I would even remember what you were talking about.  

tick, tick ... BOOM! (2021)

            I have for a while wanted to talk about Netflix, specifically its slate of original films, and its evolving role in the media landscape. The function of a streaming service has gone well past the days of just hoarding famous pre-existing titles it thinks will keep viewers signed on. These days, the merits of a streaming service seem to hinge mostly upon its slate of original content.

    While there are certainly fun conversations to be had about "prestige television" in the age of streaming, today I'm more interested in Netflix's class of original films because, no matter how viciously Netflix attacks this new frontier, it seems to have an impossible time creating movies of lasting cultural relevance.

            I’ll use one of their most popular offerings, The Old Guard, as an example. This film dropped on Netflix back in July of 2020, following a band of unkillable warriors who dedicate their immortal lives to protecting the innocent and serving noble causes, all while evading forces that would exploit them for their gifts. The film was reportedly a huge hit for the service, scoring the goal post of seventh most viewed original film by that point, and we’re due for a sequel later this year, with the possibility of a third movie teased by Netflix.

Yet I don’t know a single person who is excited to see another one of these. One of the most successful movies on the most successful streaming platform, and I don’t even know how many of my friends have even seen the film.

            The thing is … I liked The Old Guard. I genuinely did. It balanced a very high-concept premise with a narrative that still managed to be very character driven, all while exploring weighty issues like nihilism vs purpose or hope vs cynicism. It even featured one of my favorite underappreciated actors, Matthias Schoenaerts, in one of the lead roles. Given that the film was such a smash for the company, I can’t be the only person who appreciated this film. So why is it that no person has ever asked me what I thought about the movie?

           I also don't think this is an isolated incident. I obviously can't speak to whether Abbie and her college roommates are still quoting To All the Boys I've Loved Before on the Messenger groupchat, but with few exceptions, even the most viewed Netflix films behave like little more than one-off guest stars in the larger film conversation. They don't really shape film tastes or traffic in yearly top 10 lists. They exist for a moment, and then they vanish without leaving a ripple. Filmmaker extraordinaire, Quentin Tarantino, expressed a similar sentiment at the Cannes Film Festival. Using Ryan Reynolds and his many collaborations with Netflix as an example, he shared,

“… I don’t know what any of those movies are. I’ve never seen them. Have you? I haven’t ever talked to Ryan Reynold’s agent, but his agent is like, ‘Well, it cost $50 million.’ Well, good for him that he’s making so much money. But those movies don’t exist in the zeitgeist. It’s almost like they don’t even exist.”

    By contrast, when a well-established title, a "true classic," graces the streaming service, you get headlines and reddit threads about how wonderful the film is as it is rediscovered, its place in the pantheon ratified. But if anyone ever talks about the platform’s original films, it’s only for one week, and then never again. Over 500 movies that might as well not even exist.  

            To be clear, I take no glee or satisfaction in saying any of this. I generally just want movies to be good wherever they come from, and so I think it's worth asking what needs to be done to fix this. 

The Apartment (1960)

    And you might ask ... "but Netflix, Professor? Is it not the responsibility of all good cinephiles to champion the movie theater as the beating heart of cinema?" To which I would say, I do believe that the future of the medium is brightest with movie theaters at the center--people owe to themselves to go to the cinema. 

    But I also don't believe that the best way to secure that future is by suffocating the competition. And I'm also not going to imagine that I can foresee every circumstance in which a meaningful story might emerge and declare that the traditional release model is optimal for all of them. We don't know what place streaming will have in the propagation of culture in the future, but if streaming really were the future of cinema, and it were incapable of producing anything like a classic, we would have reason to be concerned.

Don't Look Up (2021)

            This conversation isn’t limited exclusively to Netflix, per se. But as the original streaming superpower, it is something of a model for other streaming services to emulate or learn from. Moreover, as Netflix has put out roughly one new film each week for the last six or seven years, it is definitely the service with the most horses in this race.

            So, let’s ask ourselves the hard questions: why does no one remember Netflix’s films? Where did this issue even start? Are streaming films really that different from theatrical films? Is the problem at all compounded by how Netflix curates its own library? And what can be done to keep these films in the conversation?

 

Birth of the Streaming Wars

Rudy (1993)

            Netflix started out as an easy way to expand one’s exposure to films and shows that a person might be interested in but hadn’t gotten around to buying. Viewers tend to make their thresholds more accessible when selecting a movie online versus a movie they have to drive and pay to see specifically.

           In theory, this means that viewers can be more democratic in how they select what films they give attention to, which ought to lead to a more interesting creative ecosystem. Even whole genres, like the rom-com, which have in recent years struggled for viewership in the theatrical realm, have found a second life through streaming films. 

Always Be My Maybe (2019)

    According to Kira Goldberg, co-head of Netflix's original films department, “Just because studios couldn’t find a place for these movies theatrically didn’t mean that audiences stopped loving them. They were finding that interest fulfilled by TV for a long time.”

            There’s a lot of appeal for filmmakers as well. Alfonso Cuaron has said that his choice to produce Roma through Netflix was motivated by the fact that he wanted his film to be available to as wide of an audience as possible. Moreover, in a time where “the movie star” is having a harder time luring audiences into the cinema, a streaming film can find higher demand when attached to a favorite actor. Likewise, a trending Netflix title can lean credence to a given celebrity and gateway further career opportunities.

            The theory is, since viewers don’t have to pay for a specific film, they’re more agreeable to spending their time on something edgy or niche. This helps elevate more experimental media, which itself opens the doors for artists to do what they really want to do instead of what executives want them to want to do. Various filmmakers have shared personal experiences that corroborate this idea. Chris Williams, director of The Sea Beast, the platform’s top performing original animated film, shared his experience of deciding to move to Netflix after leaving Walt Disney Animation Studios.

“When I decided I was going to leave, I went to get the lay of the land and met other studios. And I was impressed that they talked about their five-year plan, or 10-year plan, the ‘why we believe we’re going to be successful’ presentations. Netflix was different. Netflix was like, ‘This is the crazy train. We don’t know where this is going. You want in?’”

Given the success of the Netflix model, it’s no wonder that competitors started to want a bite at the apple. The early 2010s brought new contenders like HULU and Amazon Prime Video. They represented competition not only for audience attention but also titles available for showcasing. 

It was around here that Netflix started to invest in both films and tv shows that they could build from the ground up and retain ownership over. We would see another wave of competitors flooding the market around the end of the decade and the start of the 2020s with services like Peacock, Paramount+, Max (then HBO Max), Apple TV, and Disney+, which really accelerated the production rate.

Jerry Maguire (1996)

    As more alternatives flood the market, you have more nets in the sea trying to fish headliners for viewing, and so it becomes harder for Netflix to hold onto reliable titles that will keep subscribers coming back. The best way to guarantee loyalty to your brand is to have stuff that none of the other kids have. Netflix has taken this to heart, investing heavily in original content, both in tv shows and feature films. 

While Netflix still tries to hold onto pre-existing titles for viewer consumption, its current game plan focuses less on granting access to the best films of yesteryear and more on luring subscribers with the prospect of being up to date on the latest trending hashtag. (This itself leads to an issue wherein streaming services neglect licensing and showcasing older films, particularly those of the Classic Hollywood era, risking the erasure of yet another branch of film, but that deserves its own essay ...) Thus, the fundamental purpose of the platform, and even the medium of streaming itself, has undergone a radical transformation: having graduated from merely collecting culture, Netflix is now faced with the task of creating it.

Red Notice (2021)

    And yet, the service has struggled to put out films with any kind of cultural weight. Their films attract viewers, at least for a moment, but they seldom capture the social imagination. It does appear to be a lack of incentive, not opportunity, that keeps viewers from granting that second viewing. Netflix crowds my “Watch Again” bar with original titles, yet the space that, say, The Adam Project occupies in my mind is minimal. 

Given the service’s unique approach to distribution, one that completely bypasses the ancestral temple of film viewing, it’s easy to write this off as a streaming vs theaters problem, but I believe the problem runs a little deeper than that.

 

Netflix vs Theaters

            I want to talk for a moment about the film that got us started on this odyssey, Cary Joji Fukunaga’s Beasts of No Nation. This film follows a child who is inducted into the army of a rebellion force in his country’s civil war. It was with this film that Netflix first entered the streaming wars as the first film to go directly to the streaming service.

Producer Amy Kaufman said at the time, “This movie will have the muscle of Netflix behind it. It will definitely be seen by a lot more and different kinds of people through Netflix than it would have through a traditional platform.” She further shared, “[This film] could be a game changer. This has the potential to change the way people perceive how movies and art are delivered to them.”

    What’s especially interesting to me here is that this film represents a certain kind of movie, one that Netflix desperately wants to be associated with, yet one that is directly opposed to the kinds of films it has become notorious for. As a social issue movie adapted from a book and anchored to star talent like Idris Elba, Beasts of No Nation was the kind of movie that felt designed for the Oscars season, but when it was announced that the film would drop on Netflix the same day, all four major theater chains boycotted the movie, and so it was disqualified from Oscar consideration.

Streaming has faced this kind of gatekeeping basically since the start as filmmakers, understandably threatened by what this poses to cinemas, have tried to safeguard theatrical movies as the higher form of entertainment. See: Steven Spielberg’s remarks at the Cinema Audio Society in February of 2019:

Cinema Paradiso (1988)

“I hope all of us really continue to believe that the greatest contributions we can make as filmmakers is to give audiences the motion picture theatrical experience. I’m a firm believer that movie theaters need to be around forever …

“I don’t believe that films that are just given token qualifications, in a couple of theaters for less than a week, should qualify for the Academy Award nominations … Once you commit to a television format, you’re a TV movie.”

The question of whether streaming is killing theaters is more complicated than it seems at a glance. From a certain perspective, the theater business is thriving. At this point, it’s almost like a tentpole film has failed at the box office if it grosses less than a billion. Moreover, a study in 2018 revealed that the most active consumers of streaming content were also the most faithful theater attendees. This snapshot speaks to a future where theaters and streaming services can coexist and even complement one another.

The Two Popes (2019)

            As Netflix and other streaming services have shown staying power, theaters have tried to find ways to lean into the streaming world, being more open to screening streaming exclusive films, which in turn lends some legitimacy to these films and the services they originate from. Theatrical attendance has shown remarkable resilience across the decades, yet its continued endurance has always been walking a tightrope as it competes with other forms of visual media. Once upon a time that was cable tv. Today it’s streaming.

    But at the same time, there have been all sorts of developments since that 2018 study, including a yearlong global shutdown that forced studios to radically change how they distribute, produce, and even greenlight films. Films like The Woman in the Window were originally slated for a theatrical release, but after being lost in the shuffle of the COVID-19 shutdown, they were relegated to Netflix release, where they were able to enjoy one whole week of public discourse. 

Strange World (2022)

    To that end, the kinds of films that thrive at the box office are becoming increasingly rare. Animated films, especially non-franchise offerings, are among the modes of film struggling for attention in a post-corona world. We’re finding out not even superhero films are safe.

And yet, studios who are putting all their eggs in the streaming game have found that Netflix and HULU can’t give them what they want. It is harder to see concrete returns on something that doesn’t actually earn its own income. John Fithian, head of the National Association of Theatre Owners, observed, 

Titanic (1997)

“It is now more irrefutable than ever that theatrical is the keystone for the movie industry. Releasing major films with massive budgets directly to streaming platforms is not a sustainable business model. The return on investment is non-existent." Further adding, "Movie fans want a theatrical release to help them decide what their best viewing options are.” 

            Last year’s Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery provided one of the most interesting case studies of this phenomenon. It was alarming when Netflix acquired the rights to the first two follow-ups to Knives Out, the rare midbudget, non-franchise megahit at the box office. 

    But Johnson insisted on seeing that his film have some kind of theatrical release. The film only played in theaters for one weekend, and on a limited number of screens, but it still made headlines with its box office conquest. This theatrical spree did not hinder the film’s explosive landing when it hit the service a month later. This poses questions on what exactly streaming and theater’s relationship to one another could be. In Johnson’s words,

“We were very interested in how it did. We wanted it to do incredibly well for a lot of reasons. I guess for me, because I really want to show that this can happen and this can be a huge success. And that when it hits the service, people will still turn up and it will be huge on the service. That those two things can complement each other. Because I want more next time. I want more theaters. I want it for longer." 

     The question of how theaters and streaming fit together is a question that’s been on our mind for the last several years. Theaters are not only better investments for those banking the films, but they also tend to make for better experiences for the consumer. 

   And yet the current theatrical model doesn’t accommodate the complete artistic landscape. I’m thrilled that Avatar: The Way of Water and The Super Mario Bros. Movie helped the post-pandemic box office bounce back, but I’m still steamed that Turning Red didn’t even get the chance for so much as a participation award, which just goes to show that the kinds of films that succeed in the theater haven’t really changed. And this is where we could potentially explore what obligation audiences have in creating a healthy theatrical market, but ... we'll have to open that box another time ... 

Theatrical films tend to earn the graces of critics, even if not always the attention of the masses. I do think that it is overall in the best interest of film as a whole that theaters be the default, but it can be easy to slip into dire prepositions that streaming films are on their own less good, which isn't really fair.

 

Are Netflix Movies Actually Worse? (not necessarily)

         After conceding that it can’t survive in the traditional theatrical venue, you run into the issue of trying to prove that your art is still legitimate. This is where Netflix especially has been gunning after that most elusive of awards, the Academy Award for Best Picture, proving once and for all that even streaming films could sit at the table with the big kids. (While more than a few Netflix films have found recognition at the Oscars, the first streaming service to claim that top prize was actually Apple TV, with Sian Hader’s CODA in 2022.)

            Direct to streaming films also naturally inherit a curse brought on by those before—films that were “made for tv” or “direct to video.” Studios seem to be mindful of this stigma, which is one of the reasons why they continue to prioritize things like star power or blockbuster level effects in attempt to assure audiences that their streaming exclusives are no less stacked than what they'd find on the big screen. 

    Yet even before COVID-19 started herding films onto streaming, Netflix had already become a sort of graveyard for films that studios were showing little confidence in. It was only after poor test screenings that Warner Bros. sacrificed Andy Serkis' Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle to Netflix where a failure would be easier to obscure. Still, giving a firm answer to whether direct to streaming films deserve this reputation is one that I’ll admit I’m not really prepared to answer.

           The archetypal Netflix film might be something like Extraction, an action flick featuring Chris Hemsworth as an ex-soldier tasked with rescuing the son of a crime lord. At the time of its release, the film broke the record for Netflix’ most viewed original film. Somewhere in that statistic there has to be genuine fans of the film, but the film’s larger critical reception has been overwhelmingly tepid. 

            The film coasts on the star power of Hemsworth as he performs elaborately choreographed action techniques all pinned together by some obligatory plot points. You see the intention with them trying to use this mission to save this kid as a means for Hemsworth’s character to process the grief of losing his son, but the audience responds to this device less because it is gracefully integrated into this story and more because they recognize its shadow from better crafted films.

    The success of a movie like Extraction is often used as evidence of the mediocrity of Netflix films, but it’s not as though great art can’t be made through streaming venues. (And it’s not like we didn’t have mediocre nonsense movies before the days of streaming.) 

    We have seen really good things come from this model. And I’m not clear on what the threshold is for the number of films that need to be good to disprove this theorem. How many Romas do we need to make up for all the Ridiculous Sixes?  What is clear is that streaming films do face an uphill battle in being seen as equal to theatrical films.

We’ll use Netflix’s 2020 adaptation of Daphne de Maurier’s Rebecca as an example. The book was first adapted by filmmaking pioneer Alfred Hitchcock in 1940, sporting a psychologically fraught tale of true love, social class, and mystery, all while boasting some of the most haunting visuals of the day.

    Ben Wheatley’s adaptation premiered on Netflix in 2020. It’s a perfectly fine follow-up in many ways, and a wholly fantastic one in many others. You see the foundation set by the Hitchcock film, yes, but Wheatley’s adaptation brings the leading heroine’s psychology to the forefront with some remarkable blend of editing and directing. And that's before we factor in Lily James sliding through a role she was born to perform.

 
    Yet the film walked right into a minefield in which it was savaged by critics who insisted that it could never be as great as the original Rebecca. (There are layers of irony to this conversation when you consider what the plot of Rebecca even is.) The movie experienced a brief run of irritation before it was, too, eventually forgotten.

            Netflix films have a harder time catching the public consciousness, but I don’t think the reason for that is as straightforward as them just not being as good. The question isn’t really, “how do we get Netflix to make better films?” as much as, “how can Netflix specifically better shepherd its own library of content?” I think we owe some discussion to how the Netflix business model makes its own films feel cheap. 

 

Living in the Netflix Empire

          The most common complaint about Netflix movies is that there are simply too many of them. At nearly one new movie a week, there’s no chance for any one of them to occupy the collective consciousness for any meaningful amount of time. To that end, with all these films piled so tightly together, it’s hard to build anticipation for any one of them. 

    Netflix will occasionally identify a few flagship titles each year (this year their star project appears to be Heart of Stone, their Gal Gadot spy-vehicle) and build hype for these specific titles, but these films don’t appear to have an easier time for it. Last year’s The Gray Man was hyped as Netflix' event movie of the year, but all this promotion did not save it from the resounding apathy of critics and casual viewers. I myself never got around to the film, and my pop culture literacy feels none the worse for it. 

            Ori Mamur, the other co-head of Netflix’s original studio films group, has defended the company’s approach to filmmaking:

Fight Club (1999)

“Our aspiration is for every film we make to be great. Nobody is setting out to make a less than good or mediocre film. And the truth is we feel like the bar is actually higher at home because there are so many other things that can potentially distract somebody, as opposed to a movie theater where you’ve bought the ticket, you’ve committed the time and whether you love or hate the film, you’re there for the next two hours. We’re really trying to lean into making the kind of films that are going to get your attention and make you want to hang in and watch the entire film from beginning to end."

            Meanwhile, Scott Stuber, chairman of Netflix films, has conceded that maybe their production line has been a little excessive:

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945)

   “I think one of the fair criticisms has been we make too much and not enough is great. I think what we want to do is refine and make a little less better and more great …  If you have the budget to make 14 movies and you only have 11 great ones, let’s just make 11. That is what we need to aim toward because you really are in a deeply competitive world now and you want to make sure that you’re delivering at a pace that people see greatness consistently instead of randomly.”

One way that Netflix tries to string viewers along for the ride is through their daily top 10 listing, offering viewers a glance at the platform’s most viewed titles each day. This is a way to show off that your new film is one that “everyone is watching.” 

The trouble is, once a new film is pushed out of that top ten, no one thinks about it again--they're too busy watching next week's flavor. Too bad for everyone who didn’t catch Vivo opening weekend telling themselves they’d just catch it later. A film’s cultural endurance depends not only on making a big splash upon first release, but on continuing to be an active player across time. 

            Compare this to how theatrical films have historically behaved. Whereas a popular Netflix film might enjoy about a week in the Top 10 ranking, theaters will keep a film around for much longer. Even less popular offerings will hang around for about a month. Meanwhile, my local cinema kept Top Gun: Maverick around for basically the entire summer. While things like opening weekend are major factors in how we view “success,” theatrical release still offers a window for conversation to disseminate. 

Once the film becomes available for home viewing, this new wave of availability stirs more awareness and interest in the film, one that is replicated across the years as it hops across other streaming services. It's clear that films depend on not only sustained attention, but also multiple opportunities for exposure. Netflix films suffer from having only a single moment of impact. After a film disappears from the Top 10, it’s not unavailable, but it might as well be.

    The few Netflix films that do accrue any kind of lasting social conversation tend to be those films that garner some Oscar attention. Films like Marriage Story or Roma generally come out on the platform around the end of the year and then receive an extra lifeline during awards season a few months later. 

    These films not only come from more practiced hands, but they also benefit from extended conversation. And even if established filmmakers like Noah Baumbach or Alfonso Cuaron weren’t getting more promotion from the services platforming them, these are the kinds of filmmakers who are going to naturally attract audience attention. We get maybe two films like this a year if we’re fortunate, and they have to crawl over the unburied corpses of many other offerings with much less cultural hold.

            Perhaps in deference to the widespread criticism of too much content, Netflix has indicated that they are in fact adopting a slower approach in producing original films. There is good and bad represented here. Jane Campion (who recently won a best directing Oscar for her Netflix exclusive, The Power of the Dog) has expressed concern that with Netflix cutting back on slots for new media, fewer untested filmmakers will get the chance to be discovered. (Worth noting, Baumbach had already earned one Oscar nomination for his screenplay for The Squid and the Whale, meanwhile Cuaron had accrued both wins and nominations across multiple categories for Children of Men, Gravity, and Y tu Mamá También).

La La Land (2016)

    I think there’s a valid concern at the heart there, especially as it pertains to those trying to break into the industry. But at the same time, when said filmmakers only have a weekend to capture the attention of the masses, how much opportunity were they really getting to begin with? Streaming didn’t remove this barrier of entry for emerging filmmakers. It just localized it.

            In a landscape where only a few select films can organically attract the attention of the masses, it’s little wonder that so much of Hollywood is escaping to the streaming world. But this influx of content forces all of these films to compete with one another in a game where no one really wins.

            Sean Fennessey of The Ringer said it best,

"Movies are sacred. It feels haughty, even delusional to say that. But their power is unique among cultural experiences. Not just the sanctity of an iconic, life-changing film, like Singin’ in the Rain or Raging Bull. But the idea of how a film finds us, in what way and where. Netflix’s chicken coop structure—with content in close quarters pecking itself to death—feels devaluing for a movie like Okja. In that environment, it is made equal to Kodachrome and The Cloverfield Paradox. You could say the same for Blockbuster Video or a visit to the multiplex in decades past. But the elimination of those same barriers to entry—the price and research and planning that went into the choice—that Netflix celebrates are the very things that could make them special. They’ve also removed themselves from the mythologizing that movies need.” 

            There is something to fear about a media landscape where the majority of the racers are forgotten the moment they cross the finish line. Over five-hundred movies, and maybe four of them have made a dent in pop culture. Something's gotta give.

 

            Doctor’s Prescription

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)

           The biggest talking point has been for Netflix to (please!) slow down their production line. Maybe see if they can pull off fewer than fifty films a year. This can not only allow for greater attention to individual projects, but also help build anticipation for each new release. Promotion for Netflix films varies between production, but generally lasts between two weeks and a month--I've experienced more anticipation for dentist appointments. 

    Despite their insistence that every single film they put out is a delicately crafted jewel molded in the refining fires of their own heart, I doubt that a single Netflix executive could list every one of the films their service puts out during any given quarter. Maybe even any given month. 

Again, recent reports suggest that Netflix is adopting a slower rate of output, and for that we can all breathe a sigh of relief. Netflix has spent ten years throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks—surely by now they have enough data to decide where they want to commit their time and energy.

Private Life (2018)

           Some part of this burden also falls on critical voices to try to elevate and commemorate films from this model. Maybe scout out if there are films besides Roma and Marriage Story that are worth celebrating? Perhaps it might soon be time for a ten-year appraisal of how Beasts of No Nation changed the film world forever?

            Other voices have pushed for Netflix and other streaming services to start investing in (of all things) physical media for their exclusive content. It’s hard for some of us to imagine, but there are people who don’t sully themselves trying to keep their heads above water in the streaming wars, and perhaps they represent a vital segment of the market yet untapped. Moreover, physical copies of digital media further ensure film preservation and accessibility, which are far from sealed deals even in the digital age.

            More radically, Netflix can consider incorporating a moratorium approach. Constant access isn’t always the boon it’s made out to be. I have films that have been sitting on my Netflix queue since freshman year that I keep telling myself I will get around to one day. 

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

    There has been substantial (and justified) pushback against streaming services dropping exclusive content altogether, but putting their catalog on rotation can help approximate the conditions by which theatrical films find their rhythm for exposure and re-exposure, not to mention dispel some of the choice paralysis that afflicts its viewers and penalizes its original films. (The one complication I foresee might be muddying the waters of how residuals are calculated for the cast and crew, but I would be on the side of the artists in that fight.)

We can look to film history for this. Having a film always at your fingertips is a very recent innovation in the film game, yet classics have been around since the beginning. 

    For the first several decades, the cinema was the only reliable place to experience a feature film, and this only helped mythologize the films they showcased. Studios would make a lot of show and dance whenever they premiered a film, and then the film would go into the archives for a time until it saw a re-release some time later. If you were quick enough to catch the movie while it was showing, you got to brag to all your friends about what it was like to see Cary Grant being chased through a cornfield by a rogue airplane.

Catching a film outside of its theatrical release meant securing a working projector and a print of the film reel (these were not produced for the masses), a much more laborious process than browsing through a Netflix queue. It was almost entirely up to studios to determine when their films could be viewed. You waited for your favorite movie to screen the same way some of us might wait for a favorite Broadway show to come to town.

The Wizard of Oz (1939)

    Once television came in the 1950s, movies could start to slide into your living room. This allowed for a wider menu and more accessibility, but you were still at the mercy of the programming and the schedule. Studios remained very selective about which movies were available for television and which were saved for theatrical re-release. 

In the 1980s, home media completely changed how we thought about media with VHS guaranteeing ownership over a title you specifically acquired and could view at your own leisure. Then in the 2000s DVR helped pin events you weren’t able to catch live, and streaming broke out of its shell shortly thereafter, which is more or less where we are today.

           While certain films really were “instant classics,” many of cinema’s most celebrated offerings only came to classic-hood upon later exposure, either on theatrical re-release or on home media. Netflix movies can’t really be rediscovered if they’re always buried at the bottom of the Netflix queue, technically on hand but abandoned both by studios and audiences.  

 

Continue Watching? 

The Kid (1921)

              The ability to be moved or thrilled by a text decades or even centuries after it has premiered is a testament to vitality and importance of art. This is why we even bother seeking out good films in the first place. It’s also an ongoing conversation, which is why it’s important to keep the doors open for new films to join the ranks, wherever they come from.  

          While terms like “browsing Netflix” or “binge-watching” have collected connotations of laziness, the initial appeal behind streaming services like Netflix was the giant catalog it presented of our cultural touchstones, and the way it made that accessible for the masses. As Netflix and its progeny become not just custodians but potential creators of cultural touchstones, this kind of discussion becomes vital to the cultural endurance at large.

           The oldest of Netflix films are still not even a decade in age. They haven’t yet entered a space in which they could be considered truly “classic.” Their fate is far from written. Yet we still have an obligation to our art to ensure that it has the chance to touch audiences--not just opening weekend, but for generations to come.

        --The Professor

Klaus (2019)